This drug story just goes bust

The drug case involving Democratic state Rep. Denise Andrews of Orange and her Republican opponent in the November elections, Susannah Whipps Lee of Athol, is heavy stuff.

It’s a case that seems to turn the world on its head, but which on closer scrutiny might be representative of just a fluff of small town politics.

It started with Ms. Andrews telling the Athol police chief a story she said was told to her by a member of his department.

According to this story, which was recorded in a police report, a drug dealer sold Ms. Lee cocaine on the evening of Aug. 10. Shortly after the purchase, the dealer called the Athol police and reported the sale, prompting an officer to go to Ms. Lee’s home and take the drug away from her.

As I have noted, the story has too many contradictions to be taken seriously.

The individual allegedly buying the drug, for example, is not the Democrat. It is the Republican, and everyone knows that’s a crock.

Then there is the flaky idea of a drug dealer dropping a dime on a client, and a well-connected one at that, since Ms. Lee is the chairman of the Athol Board of Selectmen.

And since when did drug dealers develop a taste for partisan politics?

Under what authority can a police officer, acting on a tip, go to a person’s house without a warrant and take possession of the drugs that person had allegedly just bought?

And what goofball would voluntarily give drugs to an officer who came asking for them at her house?

A big-time city police department, having been presented with this story, would thank Ms. Andrews and send her on her way, and maybe keep an eye on Ms. Lee, just in case.

That didn’t happen, however. The Athol department, afraid its name might be sullied, launched an investigation afterward, and concerned that its findings might be questioned, asked the state attorney general to do its own probe.

Ms. Lee, wanting to get ahead of any negatives publication of the story could generate, voluntarily took a drug test and presented the findings to the Police Department.

After a two-week investigation, the Athol police chief determined the allegations against Ms. Lee to be baseless. Among other things, he found that the officer who allegedly picked up the drug from Ms. Lee’s house was not on duty that night and there was no recorded conversation of someone calling in to report a drug sale. Ms. Andrews, who is not giving any interviews on the issue, insists that she was only doing her civic duty in relaying the story. That Ms. Lee is running against her in November is purely incidental, I’m sure.

The story, meanwhile, is likely to snowball.

The police chief is investigating whether a member of his staff made a turkey out of Ms. Andrews, who refuses to reveal her source.

Ms. Lee, who has no problem with how the Police Department handled the case, said she will be pursuing legal action against Ms. Andrews.

“For someone of her position to report something that had no factual basis, and which was incredibly mean and vicious, means she is either missing a heart or a brain,” she said.

Paraphrasing the immortal Jerry Garcia, what a long strange trip this case has been.

•In an email that was missed prior to my Friday column, Sen. Scott Brown’s campaign issued the following statement to a question I had raised about the senator’s position on Affirmative Action:

“Scott Brown supports equal opportunity and efforts to reach out to historically disadvantaged communities to ensure a diverse and qualified pool of candidates as part of a merit-based hiring system, but does not support race-based quotas.”